


'Hope' is the thing with feathers

by Hazel75



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Genre: F/M, Hope, Introspection, Skye's perspective, faith - Freeform, so working out my feelings through fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:59:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3562196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazel75/pseuds/Hazel75
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Introspective piece regarding Skye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Hope' is the thing with feathers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



When the episodes (that's how she's come to think of them, as episodes) happen, it’s like the world is coming apart around her, and she's the only point of stillness. Ironically enough, though, the rest of the time she usually feels like she's what’s in danger of flying apart, shattering outward from her heart. Of the two, she’s more frightened for the world.

 

When she’s feeing morose, she figures she’s always had the power to blow her world apart, never had solid ground to stand on. She’d have thought she'd be used to it, be more adaptable. Because she’d thought she had learned to accept that there was something in her that prevented her from getting a safe, stable world. Turns out the difference between literal and metaphorical, really important, really meaningful.

 

Foolishly, she’d started feeling safe, like she might belong, have a place, have a firm spot to call her own. Now, she knows the truth: she is an abomination.

 

She’d done some reading, because, yeah, she has time and the Internet in her self-appointed cage. Abomination is used to describe something which is abhorred or loathsome, something forbidden and terrible. The Hebrew word _shiqqwuts_ , which has been translated as abomination, was used to describe the calamities which would befall the Jews because of sinful practices – idolatry, witchcraft and the like. It’s not a pleasant term, but she thinks it’s a fitting description for her.

 

And there should be shame with that but there's almost freedom in the knowing. Because now that she knows what she is, she can do something about it. Definitions remain the same, but, maybe, just maybe, the thing defined doesn’t have to.

 

Winter turns into spring, the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, and the abomination can become a work of beauty. Perhaps in the naming of a thing, there can being a renaming. She’s not a fatalist, doesn’t think she has it in her to be so.

 

She thinks a lot about hope. Sometimes she wonders if her hope is foolish or even dangerous. The story of Pandora is ambiguous. Is hope a blessing withheld from humankind or a curse which remained imprisoned after all the other ills are released? Nietzsche thought hope “the most evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment” keeping man from escaping by ridding himself of life. Skye hopes (there’s that word again) Nietzsche’s full of shit.

 

And thankfully she’s not alone in her hope. For that matter, others seem to have actual faith, a word she’s not quite prepared to apply to her own feelings because she hasn’t quite achieved the belief, the knowing in the face of the unknown required by faith.

 

Fitz was her first champion, the first to have faith in her, in who she was when he learned the truth. Coulson (unsurprisingly) is also unwilling to accept her as a monster, an abomination, instead seeing a miracle, or at least the potentiality of one. But since she’s known him, Coulson’s not been one to accept the most obvious answer, to not dig below the surface. He’s told her she sees differently, and she thinks she’s not the only one. And May, May is also her champion, whether it’s because she stands with Coulson or because she believes in Skye as well. Skye thinks it’s unimportant which is the reason and chooses to accept the support that is offered.

 

She’s sitting next Coulson on the cot in her oh-so-luxurious cell. “Do you ever think we’re like Alonso Quijano? Delusionally seeing ourselves as Don Quixote, tilting at windmills?”

 

Coulson blinks and looks at her curiously.

 

“I can read, Coulson, even if I haven’t been exposed to much of culture in my life.” She shrugs. “And I’ve had plenty of time lately.”

 

“I mean, just because our windmills are actually monsters, are we any less foolish, any less Quixotic, for thinking we can fight them?”

 

Coulson looks away, pensive and considering. “I think that that we fight is important.”

 

“Yeah, I get that. But it’s not just the trying, it’s that what we’re trying to do can actually be done. That’s important, too, isn’t it?”

 

He narrows his eyes and nods. “Yes. It is. And I do believe it.” He shrugs. “I know there are those who think that’s foolish of me, but I really do believe. And I don’t think it’s foolish to have that belief.”

 

Skye looks down at her hands on her knees. “Yeah, me too. I kind of have to. And I’ve been trying to have that kind of belief about myself, what I can become. I mean, I have hope, but I want to have faith. I think I need to believe that even if I was meant to be a weapon, even if I am an abomination, that I can be something else. Because weapons cut down, destroy, and I want to build things, to create. And abominations are things to be avoided, not to be touched. I don’t want to be untouchable forever.”

 

Coulson takes one of her hands in his and turns it over, tracing the lines of her palm softly with a callused finger. “I don’t think we’re ever done becoming who we are.”

 

She quirks an eyebrow, looking over at him. “No, you wouldn’t, Mr. I Died but I Got Better.”

 

He smiles ruefully. “Yeah, but it’s more than that. After I came back people kept telling me I was different, that I had changed, and at first I deeply worried about what had been done to me that I didn’t seem to be the same. I was left unsure that that change could be anything but bad or wrong.” She lifts the hand he had been holding to touch lightly the lines on the left side of his face, and he turns to look at her again, painfully earnest and sincere. “But the truth as I see it is change is always scary, always involves some amount of pain or at least discomfort. Now the how or the why is less important to me than the what I do with that change. I can’t regret that I came back differently because I think I’m a better man for it.”

 

“Maybe you’re even more alive now than you were before. And you made yourself that way.”

 

“I like to think so. It’s how I feel.”

 

She takes his hand in hers again and digests what he’s shared. “I think I’d like to go outside today. Like outside, outside. See the sky.”

 

“That can be arranged.”

 

“Do you think you could go with me?”

 

“Absolutely. I’d like that.”

 

She squeezes his hand. “Thanks. You know, I think I’m going to make it.”

 

“I know you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Emily Dickinson poem.


End file.
